gloom, inner or outer,
with a new epithet or synonym, upon his figure or his mind.

Even of mere ancillaries and colorless lines, Homer will make you
a resounding glory. What means this most familiar one, think you:

_Ten d'apameibomenos prosephe koruthaiolos Hector?_

--Surely here some weighty splendid thing is being revealed? But
no; it means: "Answering spake unto her great glittering-helmeted
Hector;" or _tout simplement,_ 'Hector answered.' And hardly can
anyone open his lips, but it must be brought in with some
variation of that sea-riding billow, or roll of drums:

_Ton d'emeibet epeita anax andron Agamemnon.
Hos phato. Ten d'outi prosephe nephelegereta Zeus_

--whereafter at seven lines down we get again:

_Ten de meg' ochthesas prosephe nephelegereta Zeus;_

--in all of which I think we do get something of primitivism and
unskill. It is a preoccupation with sound where there is no
adequate excuse for the sound; after the fashion of some orators,
whom, to speak plainly, it is a weariness to hear. But you will
remember how Shakespeare rises to his grandest music when he has
fatefullest words to utter; and how Milton rolls in his supreme
thunders each in its recurring cycle; leads you to wave-crest
over wave-trough, and then recedes; and how the crest is always
some tremendous thing in vision, or thought as well as sound. So
he has everlasting variation; manages his storms and billows; and
so I think his music is greater in effect than Homer's--would
still be greater, could we be sure of Homer's tones and vowel-
values; as I think his vision goes deeper into the realm of the
Soul and the Eternal.

Yet is Homer majestic and beautiful abundantly. If it is true
that his reputation gains on the principle of _Omne ignotum pro
magnifico_--because he is unknown to most that praise him--let
none imagine him less than a wonderful reservoir of poetry. His
faults--to call them that--are such as you would expect from his
age, race, and peculiar historic position; his virtues are
drawn out of the grandeur of his own soul, and the current from
the Unfathomable that flowed through him. He had the high
serious attitude towards the great things, and treated them
highly, deeply and seriously. We may compare him to Dante: who
also wrote, in an age and land not yet literary or cultured, with
a huge racial inspiration. But Dante had something more: a
purpose to reveal in symbol the tremendous worl